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Date:      Mon, 21 May 2007 21:14:20 -0400
From:      "Maxim Khitrov" <mkhitrov@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Sendmail ignores hosts.allow
Message-ID:  <26ddd1750705211814p71597e9nb18005349f222c84@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <46523D81.4050603@webanoide.org>
References:  <26ddd1750705211537j78ed83fdm921f7f5e5df5c4@mail.gmail.com> <46522BE0.4080407@webanoide.org> <26ddd1750705211652q500f95a1t15280ca017ed46df@mail.gmail.com> <46523D81.4050603@webanoide.org>

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On 5/21/07, Mikhail Goriachev <mikhailg@webanoide.org> wrote:
> Maxim Khitrov wrote:
> > On 5/21/07, Mikhail Goriachev <mikhailg@webanoide.org> wrote:
> >> Maxim Khitrov wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I'm trying to restrict access to sendmail via hosts.allow. Don't need
> >>> a firewall, since I just want to block everyone but the localhost from
> >>> sending e-mail out. Anyway, it seems that sendmail ignores these
> >>> settings even though it was compiled with TCPWRAPPERS. I added
> >>> "sendmail : all : deny" as the very first line in hosts.allow, just to
> >>> see if it will let me connect from anywhere. It does - not just from
> >>> localhost, but from all remote locations as well. I have no problems
> >>> connecting and sending e-mail. Am I missing something?
> >> I followed your earlier thread (hopefully this is a related topic). This
> >> is strange. By default, sendmail is disabled. You don't even have to put
> >> anything into rc.conf:
> >>
> >> # grep sendmail /etc/defaults/rc.conf
> >>
> >> Sendmail listens and accepts local mail only. You can't connect to it
> >> from another machine:
> >>
> >> # telnet some.host.tld 25
> >> Trying 1.2.3.4...
> >> telnet: connect to address 1.2.3.4: Connection refused
> >> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
> >>
> >> You must've tweaked something to make it behave differently.
> >>
> >>> I tested the same setup with sshd, and that works properly. After a
> >>> quick search on google it seems that I'm not the only one with this
> >>> problem, but I couldn't find any solution to this. Any help is greatly
> >>> appreciated.
> >> Share with us your testing methodology. From previous thread, I
> >> understand that you just want something to submit your local mail (from
> >> daemons, scripts, etc). Then as others already said, a simple alias in
> >> /etc/mail/aliases and executing newaliases is sufficient.
> >
> > Ok, so here's my current setup. I have sendmail_enable="NO" in rc.conf
> > (same as not having it there I guess), I've modified /etc/mail/aliases
> > to forward everything sent to root to my gmail account, and I added
> > "sendmail : all : deny" as the first line to /etc/hosts.allow while
> > I'm testing everything. Once I make sure that the deny rule works,
> > I'll allow access to sendmail only from localhost. This is all on
> > FreeBSD 6.2, but it's running in a jail, so that might have some
> > effect.
> >
> >>From my previous thread, sendmail is used only to accept messages sent
> > by processes running on the server, and send them to real e-mails
> > specified in /etc/aliases. That part works. However, even though
> > sendmail_enable is set to "NO" in rc.conf, sendmail still listens on
> > port 25, accepts mail from remote hosts, and the hosts.allow rule
> > doesn't seem to apply. Strange, isn't it? By the way, I just tried
> > removing sendmail_enable line from rc.conf completely and that had no
> > effect.
> >
> > All I do for testing is basically start/restart sendmail, then telnet
> > to the server from my workstation at home. I get a standard reply, and
> > can then do the usual HELO, MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, DATA, and so on.
> > Relaying doesn't work, but sending to and all other aliases works fine
> > (which in this case is bad).
> >
> > Think this might be some bug when sendmail is running in a jail? I
> > haven't modified anything beyond what's mentioned in this e-mail, and
> > I've checked all the settings. I can definitely connect to the server
> > from remote hosts despite the rc.conf and hosts.allow configuration.
>
> This is a different story now. On your host machine (as in jails' host),
> sendmail binds to localhost and never responds to outside world. This is
> expected. However, sendmail in a jail, binds to jail's IP address and
> that is why you can talk to it from outside.
>
> Run this on your host:
>
> # sockstat -4l | grep sendmail
>
> The output should look like this:
>
> root     sendmail   1624  4  tcp4   1.2.3.5:25            *:*
> root     sendmail   1624  4  tcp4   1.2.3.4:25            *:*
> root     sendmail   1624  4  tcp4   1.2.3.3:25            *:*
> root     sendmail   1624  4  tcp4   1.2.3.2:25            *:*
> root     sendmail   1208  3  tcp4   127.0.0.1:25          *:*
>
> The first four are jails. The last one is host's sendmail being "disabled".
>
>
> I'd suggest using a firewall to protect your jails instead of trying to
> completely disable sendmails.

I cna't run that on my host, because I only have access to the jail
(I'm paying for a vps server with another host). That makes sense
however, I had a feeling that it was jail-related. But what about the
hosts.allow problem? I can run a firewall, of course, but hosts.allow
seems like a more efficient way of doing the same thing. I've already
got it configured and working with sshd, so I see no reason why
sendmail doesn't want to work the same way.

- Max



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